Connections

57 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22293

Connections is a weekly series of knowledge notes from the World Bank Group’s Transport & Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Global Practice. It covers projects, experiences, and front-line developments.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 15

Will the Digital Revolution Help or Hurt Employment?: Adaptation a Key to Realizing Job Gains

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02) Raja, Siddhartha ; Ampah, Mavis

What will technological change deliver in the coming decades? And what can we do to determine the outcome? Technological change in any given society is never smooth and always negotiated. Although both perils and opportunities await, the ultimate result depends on our choices today. Governments, businesses, and individuals have shown that adapting to changing circumstances can alter the consequences of apparently ‘inevitable’ changes. And developing countries can be profoundly affected by changes seemingly limited to the advanced economies; they must adapt to what is actually a global technological playing field. The World Bank’s recently issued World Development Report 2016: digital dividends focuses on strengthening the ‘analog complements’ of the digital economy, including adapting skills to get the most out of the digital revolution. Countries whose governments can facilitate innovation, strengthen education and skill building, and build up the social safety net may be the most likely to benefit from the coming changes.
Transport at COP21: Part of the Climate Change Solution

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12) Ebinger, Jane ; Peltier, Nicolas ; Gitay, Habiba ; Monsalve, Carolina ; Losos, Andrew ; Rogers, John Allen ; Vandycke, Nancy

The case for climate action has never been stronger. Around the world, climate change is putting at risk the lives of millions of people as well as threatening many coastal cities and endangering trillion of dollars of investments in transport infrastructure and services. The Twenty-First Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will bring heads of state and ministers to Paris at the end of November to reach a global climate agreement with far-reaching implications for low-carbon and climate-resilient growth. Transport is playing a greater role in COP21 than in past UNFCCC conferences as a critical part of the solution: a sector that can contribute to both reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and building economy wide resilience to the impacts of climate change. In view of the sector’s potential, the heavily debated transport question is how to sustainably meet the rising global demand for greater interconnectedness and mobility. The World Bank and the seven other leading multilateral development banks have joined forces with the Paris Process for Mobility and Climate (PPMC) and the rest of the transport community to call for more action on transport and climate change.
Advances and Challenges in 'Intelligent Transportation': The Evolution of ICT to Address Transport Challenges in Developing Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) Wang, Winnie ; Krishnan, Raman ; Diehl, Adam

Transport efficiency and safety in the advanced economies have long benefited from information and communication technology (ICT). However, these ICT applications have typically been high-cost, customized infrastructure systems. Now the era of the Internet, digital mobile communication, and ‘big data’ analysis has created a new global potential for less costly and more powerful ‘intelligent transport systems’ (ITS). The World Bank is supporting client transport agencies in deploying these new tools, including cloud-based services, open data standards, and smartphone applications, to more efficiently manage transportation assets and improve road safety. In the process, such projects have also demonstrated improvements in the traveler’s experience and the attractiveness of public transit. Moreover, the greater potential of the new technologies to reduce congestion and travel times means that the new era has also strengthened the potential of ITS to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, realizing the potential of ITS in developing countries depends on improvements in assessment practices to find what works best and in the data capabilities of domestic institutions. Significant improvements in these areas are critical to the success of ITS.
The Identity Target in the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Enabling Access to Services for All

( 2015-09) Dahan, Mariana ; Gelb, Alan

Robust personal identification (ID) systems are critical to the success of many development programs. Regardless of the methods used, official ID for all - together with the legal, political, and economic rights it confers - is becoming a priority for governments around the world. Legal ID is on the post-2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs) agenda as SDG target 16.9, urging states to ensure that all have free or low-cost access to widely accepted, and robust identity credentials. The international community should join forces to achieve this goal, as attaining it will also be a key enabler of many other SDGs.
Impact Evaluation to Inform and Transform Investments in Transport and ICT

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-06) Vandycke, Nancy ; Legovini, Arianna ; Liaplina, Aleksandra ; Di Maro, Vincenzo

A new World Bank initiative, ‘Impact Evaluation (IE) - connect for impact,’ aims to radically transform and better inform the way that transport and information and communications technology (ICT) projects are designed and implemented. Although multilateral lending to this key strategic sector comprises 29 percent of all global assistance, only 0.4 percent of impact evaluations have had transport as a subject. This initiative aims to fill the gap and bring high quality and valuable feedback to projects, improving design, enabling mid-course corrections, and informing ex-post evaluations. For the first time, this initiative will offer a systematic sector approach to generating concrete evidence of what works, what does not, where, when and why. It will greatly increase the impact and value add of investments in transport and ICT projects, which is especially important given global trends toward increasing urbanization, with 70 percent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050.
More Climate Finance for Sustainable Transport

( 2015-05) Ebinger, Jane O. ; Vandycke, Nancy ; Rogers, John Allen

Actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stabilize warming at 2 degree Celsius, as agreed by the international community in 2009, will fall short if they do not include the transport sector. Transport is responsible for around 23 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and emissions are expected to rise without further action to curb emission growth and invest in low carbon transport modes. Investment needs are estimated at around $3 trillion to increase the sustainability of existing and new transport systems and to mitigate climate change over the 2015-35 periods. This is in addition to existing annual investments estimated at $1-2 trillion. The actions taken today to send the right policy signals, and establish the enabling institutions and regulations to attract the necessary private finance will be critical to support this transformation. Significant investment opportunities exist in public transport systems, vehicle efficiency improvement, and reducing the need for travel through demand management, regional development policies, and land use planning. As the international community embarks on the road towards CoP 21 in Paris, there is a case to be made for more climate finance flowing towards transport.
The Expanding Role for Open Data in Burkina Faso: Program Gains Wider Use in the Transitional Government

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-04) Melhem, Samia ; Rifon Perez, Axel

The widening drive to provide open data in the public sector has taken a new turn in Burkina Faso. Open data has always been recognized as an enabler of economic development and government transparency. But in October 2014, when a popular uprising ousted Burkina Faso’s long-standing leader and established a transitional government, the country’s nascent Burkina open data initiative (BODI) took on new life as an enabler of the transition. With support from the ODI and the World Bank, BODI had debuted just four months before the uprising, showcasing about 50 data sets of government information and an app that focused on education. In the months since then, the development of BODI has only accelerated, with more staff, more data sets posted, and new applications launched or planned. Under the transitional government, BODI has expanded with a web page for finding data on government contract awards and a program to help track and manage the country’s persistent drought problems. And BODI envisions a polling-place finder and reporting of vote totals as ways to support turnout and transparency for the scheduled October 2015 national elections.
Digital IDs for Development: Access to Identity and Services for All

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04) Dahan, Mariana ; Sudan, Randeep

Lack of personal official identification (ID) prevents people from fully exercising their rights and isolates them socially and economically - voting, legal action, receipt of government benefits, banking, and borrowing are all virtually closed off. The widespread lack of ID in developing countries is a critical stumbling block to national growth. Digital ID, combined with the already extensive use of mobile devices in the developing world, offers a transformative solution to the problem - a simple means for capturing personal ID that can reach far more people; and new, more efficient ways for government and business to reach and serve the population. Robust digital ID systems can produce huge savings for citizens, government, and business, increase transparency and accountability, and drive innovation. Harnessing their power will require strong political will and leadership, foreign assistance matched with local incentives, and a supportive institutional environment. Trust in data security will be critical to achieving tangible results.
Reducing Greenhouse Gases: GHG Analysis in Transport

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-03) Kopp, Andreas

World Bank is applying to transport initiatives a new and distinctive method of greenhouse gas (GHG) analysis as part of its comprehensive GHG accounting policy. In transport, choices by travelers determine usage, and a fundamental trend in much of the world is strongly boosting GHG emissions: the massive rise in motorization as household incomes and technical advances make it affordable. This tendency will push transport fuel emissions much higher unless projects sharply expand the opportunities and incentives for users to adopt low-emission modes. The World Bank’s GHG analysis for transport shows whether a given transport project can help lower the trajectory of the sector’s GHG emissions. A central feature is an estimate of the wider social costs of emissions under various modes, for example, air pollution and accidents, as well as climate change. Including them greatly increases the demonstrated benefit of emissions reducing projects and thus will also help accelerate the move to a sustainable transport sector.
Key Pathways to High-Speed Internet in the Middle East and North Africa: Spurring Competition and Building New Networks

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-03) Gelvanovska, Natalija ; Rogy, Michel ; Rossotto, Carlo Maria

Most countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are falling behind in their quest to develop high-speed Internet for rapid socioeconomic development. Despite young adults’ rising use of social networking tools and solid progress in a few countries, most of the region’s Internet remains hobbled by monopolized, inadequate infrastructure; weak investment incentives; and high costs. High-speed (broadband) Internet can drive economic and social transformations. To realize that potential, a recent World Bank study finds that MENA countries must pursue a three-pronged approach: reduce costs by fully liberalizing access to the existing Internet infrastructure; support the resulting competition with independent national regulators working within a harmonized regional framework of regulation; and promote investments in new fiber-optic networks and other ultrafast broadband infrastructure (including Long-Term Evolution or LTE) alongside existing technologies. With these measures, plus aggressive strategies for sharing public works infrastructure and subsidies for rural access, MENA can leapfrog its current information and communication bottlenecks.